


salt water kisses

by marmett



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Past Abuse, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 21:36:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12241059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmett/pseuds/marmett
Summary: Anders makes his final escape from the circle on a ship bound for Rivain, but superstition says mages are bad luck to have around on the high seas.





	salt water kisses

The sea air didn’t taste like freedom to Anders. Mostly, it tasted of salt and smelled of fish and made his eyes sting when the ocean water was thrown up over the bow into his face. Still, it was better than the stale air that smelled of old vomit and unemptied chamber pots down in the hold. And it was infinitely better than what he was running from. He knew he was hundreds of miles from the dank cell in the bottom of Kinloch, but he still felt that same sense of desperation from being alone and trapped when he went below deck.

So ocean side Anders stayed, with the wind whipping through his hair and the salt stinging his eyes. The crew didn’t pay him much mind, as long as he scurried out of the way quick enough. He propped his elbows on the railing and stared out at the sea. It was so wide and open, it had been days since they’d seen land, but he knew somewhere across the horizon was Rivain. It would be the farthest he had ever ran, maybe when there was an ocean between him and the templars he would finally be free.

Even after night fell Anders stayed out, and when he could barely keep his eyes open, he found a corner behind a wound up string of rope, and fell asleep. The wooden deck was hard, and the air was cold, but it was softer than the stone of the dungeon he spent the last year in, and he could see the light from the stars and the moon, so he would take it.

Anders had experienced some rude awakenings in his time, there were many mornings in which a swift kick in the head and Biff’s ugly mug were the first things to greet him. Now his awakening was met with sheer terror. The stars were gone from the dark swirling clouds, and all around him the crew scrambled about the ship which was rocking violently shaken by the waves and the wind. Anders jumped to his feet, the deck was slippery from the water splashing over the sides of the ship, but he kept his footing. It wasn’t raining steadily, but there were gusts of it in the wind.

A deckhand ran right into him as they rushed to secure the ship, they hardly stopped their mad dash, only yelling a quick curse at Anders, who decided he would prefer to be below deck for this one. He hurriedly made his way to the ladder leading down, barely dodging out of the way of the panicked crew. Below deck was dark, as he feared, and he almost fell several times as he stumbled down, the ship was rocking so violently. It didn’t help that his legs were shaking from fear, fear of the dark, fear of the storm, and fear of the ocean that would swallow them all up if the ship didn’t hold through the storm. Plagued by these worries, he found a corner in the hold, and curled in on himself to wait for it to all be over.

The storm thundered on above him, he could sometimes make out the shouting of the crew, and their hurried footsteps, but mostly he just heard the storm raging and the waves crashing. That is, until he heard voices, angry voices as he heard footsteps coming down into the hold the same way he had. Anders had his legs pulled up to his chest, and his face buried in them, but he looked up as a lantern was shoved into his face, and three, furious faces looked down on him.

“You! You did this. You’re a mage, knew you were bad luck but the captain insisted, and now the maker’s punishing us all for your sins!” The man with the lantern shouted down at him.

Anders flinched back. It was too much, too much like the dark dungeon, too much like when the templars would come down to “visit” him. He couldn’t protest, he only cried and apologized over and over as they dragged him out onto the deck, back into the storm.

It was only the three of them who were irate over a mage among them. No one else seemed much to care, but neither did they stop it, they only looked on as the three crewmen prayed, beseeching the maker to spare them if they cast off the sinner in their midst, as they dragged Anders behind them.

Neither did Anders protest, and he barely made a sound as they flung him overboard, into the sea.  
Anders was a strong swimmer, but he was completely helpless in the roiling waves. He was tossed and turned about, he tried to find the surface, but it was so dark, and the salt burned his eyes until he could barely keep them open. The last thing he saw before his vision went completely black was a bright glow floating toward him.  
-

When he finally came to, he could barely crack his eyes open, the light was so bright and his head was throbbing. He must have hit it when… When… Anders would have jolted up at that thought, but as it was, even opening his eyes was painful, so he slowly sat up instead, blinking in the too bright light. He was on a beach, just an arm's reach from the waterline. This was… not what he expected. He didn’t think he’d live through that, although, he had no idea where he was, the day was young, and he could still very well end up meeting a different grisly end.

He brought a hand to his forehead, calling upon his magic to sooth his headache. With the throbbing pain gone, the light was no longer unbearable, and he stumbled to his feet, and surveyed his surroundings.  
It wasn’t a beach, so much as a sand bar, and there was only open, endless ocean as far as he could see. Well, as far as all the bad endings for escape attempts, this was the worst. At least with solitary there had been an end, a way out. Here, there was nothing. He had no idea how likely it would be that another ship would pass by, or if one did, if he’d just end up meeting the same fate with a different crew, on a different ship.

Anders started to panic at the thought. He would die here, alone. He’d have a week, maybe. An entire week all by himself before he succumbed to dehydration on his own. He could… maybe. No. He had to stop that. He’d only just woken up, maybe a ship would be by in a few hours, or the next day, at the very least. He would wait.  
-

No ship came that day. Anders sat on his little sandbar until nightfall, surveying the horizon until the sun set, and saw nothing but the waves lapping at the sand. His throat was dry and scratchy, and his stomach was aching from not having eaten in a day. He fell onto his back and rolled over, staring out at the dark ocean. One more day he would wait, and then he’d have to think of something else. He couldn’t spend more than that alone in his own mind again. He would die first.

Anders’ eyes drifted shut, but then he heard a splash, like a large fish. He opened them again and sat up, it wasn’t so dark that he wasn’t able to see, but there was nothing to see. He sighed, and started to settle back down, but then he heard another splash, and he whipped his head around.

Anders gasped, and scrambled backward, there was something rising out of the water. A long dark shape, like a serpentine tail, and attached to it, a person? A rather beautiful person, with white hair and green eyes that reflected the light from the moon. The person held up one hand, that was lined with pale, branching markings, and spoke,

“Easy, I mean no harm. Are you alright?”

Anders squinted. The fishman sighed,

“I apologize, I forgot humans had such bad eyesight, here.” Then he lit up.

The markings ran all down his chin, across his chest, his arms, and even his tail, and they all glowed brilliantly, blinding Anders.

“Arrgh!” Anders said, shielding his eyes.

The glow quickly dulled into a bearable brightness, and Anders lowered his hands, blinking at the man before him.

“You! You’re the one who saved me? I saw you… glowing before I passed out.”

“I did. The sailors you were with, they threw you off. Why?”

Anders looked down, “I didn’t do it. They blamed me for the storm, but I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to be free.”

“Free. I understand that sentiment. Where you- what were you freeing yourself from, by traveling away on that ship?”

“The templars. They told me I was cursed, inhuman, but I never hurt anyone! It isn’t fair, they locked me up on a ‘maybe’ and when i didn’t do what I was told, they threw me in a dungeon, alone in the dark for a whole year. I had to get away after that, who knows what they would’ve done to me after that.” Anders hadn’t meant to say so much, but if he was going to die, he wanted someone to know. Even if that someone was a weird, glowing half-man half fish.

“Templars. Then that means you are a mage?”

Anders exhaled loudly, “What, do you have fish-mages and fish-templars to lock them up and kick them- or flap them- in the head, under the ocean too?”

The man smiled, almost sadly, “I apologize, again. No, we have nothing like that, only people like you and I, who ran, tried to claim freedom and ended up drowning in the ocean. My name is Fenris. I was a slave to a magister in the Tevinter Imperium. I tried to free myself in Seheron, but my master reclaimed me and brought me back in a ship. A storm, much like the one last night struck, and the ship sank. I was rescued, and now I am here.”

“A magister… Oh no wonder you dislike mages. It isn’t like that in the rest of Thedas, what the templars do to us it isn’t right. I only wanted to be free, like you.” Anders didn’t know why, but gaining Fenris’ approval mattered to him. The man had saved him, and Anders wanted him to like him as well.

“You can be free. I can help you, but you will never be able to go back. There are others like me, we all started out as humans, elves, dwarves, qunari even, who walked on land.”

“I-what? You mean you could give me a tail like you? And I’d live in the ocean, with you? How does that work, is it like shape shifting?”

“I do not know much of that school of magic. Possibly? But it is permanent. Someone else changed me, and I could change you too, if you wished.”

Anders sat back and thought. This was not how he expected this escape to go… But Fenris was much easier on the eyes than any templar he had ever seen. It was an easy choice, all things considered.

“Ok. I accept. Make me a fish.”

Fenris snorted, and Anders grinned at him. He quite liked the look of Fenris when he smiled.

“Here, you will need to be closer, much closer, uh, you did not tell me your name?”

“Oh, right. I’m Anders.” Anders said, crawling the few feet to the edge of the sand bar, so he was within arms reach of Fenris.

Fenris motioned for him to get closer, he looked a bit flustered. Anders obeyed, and when his face was inches from Fenris’, Fenris reached out, cupping Anders’ face in both of his hands.

“It will be just a moment, but we have to be… touching here,” Then Fenris leaned forward, and they were kissing.

It was like no kiss Anders had ever experienced before. He got sick afterward. He collapsed onto his side, gasping and retching, while Fenris, the asshole, laughed and dragged him down into the ocean with him.

It was so different from before. It was night still, but he could see everything like it was day. And the ocean itself wasn’t so cold and unforgiving as he had thought. The water filtered through his lungs like air once had, and the salt on his tongue tasted like freedom. He swam beside Fenris, easily keeping pace with his newly formed tail, and Fenris slipped his hand into Anders’ to guide him down into the ocean where they were free from all those who had hunted them.

**Author's Note:**

> repost from tumblr because i crave attention and validation.


End file.
